The present invention relates to duplication of graphic objects, and more specifically to duplication of objects in a graphics application with positioning based on object distance.
In most graphic drawing applications, ‘Duplicate’ is a standard function that is used to copy a series of objects. It should be noted that the ‘duplicate’ function is different than the ‘copy’ function and does not interfere with any objects or information placed on a clipboard.
A user selects objects to be duplicated, inputs a command for duplication, and the program places the duplicated objects—usually downward and to the right of the original objects that were duplicated. After the duplication, a user needs to reposition the objects, often through manual dragging of the objects. Repositioning of the duplicated objects can be time consuming if true precision is required between the objects and the location of the duplicated objects needs to follow consistent patterns of relative spacing. To ensure that the alignment and spacing of the duplicated objects is the same as the other objects, the user may need to employ grids, guidelines, an ‘align’ command, or some other means in order to reposition the duplicated object to the correct position relative to the original objects.